Next month, Arizona will execute its first convict in two years. The guy who is being put to death pleaded guilty to murder and claims that his sentence is “long overdue.”
On Tuesday, the Arizona Supreme Court scheduled Aaron Brian Gunches’s execution for March 19. Gunches was found guilty in 2007 of shooting and killing Ted Price, who was the ex-husband of Gunches’s girlfriend, in 2002.
The incident occurred near the Phoenix suburb of Mesa.
According to authorities, Gunches also shot a trooper twice in 2003 when he was stopped over by the Arizona Department of Public Safety near the California border.
The trooper was saved by a bulletproof vest, and the bullet casings retrieved at the site matched those that were discovered near Price’s body.
Arizona has 112 convicts on death row. The state recently carried out three executions in 2022 after an almost eight-year break.
The break was caused by allegations that a 2014 execution was bungled and by challenges in getting the medicines needed for execution.
The state was accused for taking too long to put an IV for lethal injection into a condemned prisoner at one of the executions in 2022.
Almost two years ago, the court issued a death warrant for Gunches. However, the punishment was not carried out because the Democratic attorney general of the state decided to pause executions while the state’s death penalty protocol was being reviewed.
The study came to a close in November when Katie Hobbs, the Democratic governor, fired the former federal magistrate judge she had chosen to look into the processes for carrying out executions.
Evening Commute Turned Violent: Two Slashed in Separate NYC Subway Attacks
A spokesperson stated at that time that the assessment led to significant reforms in order to comply with legal and constitutional standards, and that the governor “remains committed to upholding the law while ensuring justice is carried out in a way that’s transparent and humane.”
Gunches, who is 53 years old and is not a lawyer but is representing himself, requested that the court forgo procedural formalities and schedule his fatal injection earlier than the authorities had intended.
North Carolina’s Private School Vouchers Have Doubled—Here’s How to Get One?
He made this request in late December, claiming that his death sentence was “long overdue.”
Leave a Comment